Art by Jess Nguyen

He’s the sort of chap who walks at right angles 

Around the well-lit, open plan morgue  

With coffee machines and touch screens 

And table tennis tables—  

All for the comfort of the corpses! 

Promising young cadavers pass him 

Mapping their daily Etch-a-Sketch paths  

In tailored, Italian breathable three-piece coffins  

He is of the English persuasion; 

Not Armani but Burberry clings to his cold skin  

 As a child he would pick blueberries in the summer 

And eat them and be happy and– 

And eat more berries 

Now he carries a (not very) brief case 

Of dying light by his side 

But when he dreams, it is of berries 

And the ocean and sex and snow 

The dead cannot dream like so 

He does not carry a scythe  

He does love his wife 

He does